Authority, Liberty and Function

"You do not know why you kill me, but I know why I die: That your children may be better men than you." These are the last words of Spanish political theorist Ramiro de Maeztu (1875-1936), spoken just before his murder during the Spanish Civil War. Having become disillusioned early in life with modern Enlightenment philosophy, he eventually rejected liberal political principles altogether ("Liberty, Equality, Fraternity") as an insufficient basis for civilization. He saw what he called "the crisis of humanism," and he sought to answer this crisis by once again acknowledging man as a spiritual being: "It has been said that the central ideas of the Middle Ages consisted in looking upon the world as a vale of tears, and upon man as 'I, a sinner.' That is why the Middle Ages have been accused of darkening the world and diminishing man...But that the world is a vale of tears, and that man is 'I, a sinner,' are not judgments characteristic of a given period of humanity. They must have been thought by men of all ages in consequence of that which really distinguishes man from all other beings on earth: the ideal of perfection in his soul." (Excerpt, Chapter 1)